What constitutes a missional activity? It seems that in the name of being missional and engaging our culture, any random act of kindness is heralded as being a move in the missional direction. I personally find this a troubling trend among young church leaders and church planters. In an effort to distance ourselves from the fear-driven scare tactics and the bait-and-switch practices of yesterday, many are proudly declaring that they have “no hidden agendas” when it comes to “missional activities.”
Not long ago, I sat with a church planting pastor who proclaimed that he was leading his church to be missional. He told me that he and his congregation had gone to the middle of their major metropolitan city and passed out flowers at Valentine’s Day to random people who passed by as a way of doing something nice with no strings attached (they intentionally didn’t mention their church or anything about them because they did not want to have any hidden agendas). I will get into the issue of hidden agendas at a later time (should we consider the Gospel a hidden agenda?), but here I want to talk about what constitutes an activity as being missional. Is handing out flowers to random people bad? Of course not. Is it missional? I say it is NOT MISSIONAL because unbelievers never had an opportunity to take the next step towards encountering Jesus Christ as a result of this activity.
What do I mean by “next step towards encountering Jesus Christ?” I mean this: missional activities seek to gain influence in the lives of unbelievers in the hope and expectation of inviting them to encounter the person of Jesus Christ. An activity that is disconnected from relationship lacks the ability for gaining influence. However, an activity that allows a Christian to meet a tangible need or show genuine love to a person who is disconnected from God, it creates the opportunity for influence. Relationship is key because Influence is key!
Being good citizens is good and being nice is good – but being a good citizen and doing nice things does not necessarily lead to spiritual transformation. Only Jesus Christ can change people’s lives, and apart from the opportunity to encounter Christ, nice activities are just that – nice. They may make us feel good about ourselves, but let us not confuse feeling good and helping people as being about the task of making disciples of all nations. There are plenty of atheist philanthropists who are doing nice things and feeling good.
So, as we as church leaders think through how to become more missional, let us think two questions: (1) How are we going to build relationships with unbelievers and gain influence in their lives? (2) What is the next step that I hope my new friend will take in encountering the person of Jesus Christ?
People are free to take the next step or not – we have no control over that, but we do our community and our friends a disservice when we fail to do our part to lead people to the only one who offers hope.
Keywords: influence, missional, missional activity, nice, relational
Comments
Jon,
Great post. I have done "servant evangelism" projects thinking that they wers good things, which they were; handing out bottles of water at parades, free car washes just because, etc.
I think that if we stay close to Scripture and model the examples that Jesus and the Apostles left for us then we will be missional without even trying hard.
For me, being missional/incarnational is not a program or a method, it's simply me being me in the community and culture God has placed me in. When I say "being me" I mean, the new me that God has created.
Incarnational, for me, simply means Christ living His life in me and through me; transforming my life, and through me, transforming the lives of others. That trickles down to my purpose and mission in life, wich is to know Christ and to make Him known.
I have no problem with handing out flowers to people. Maybe they could have coupled that with a community survey to assess unmet community needs, or some way to connect with people beyond the flower give away.
Thanks David. Incarnating Christ in our community and culture is crucial to being missional, and it starts with a transformed life.
For me a salient example of "missional activity" in the Gospels would be those things for which Jesus coMISSIONed the 72 in Luke 10:
i) Bless people and Grace their homes.
ii) Eat and drink with them and stick with them.
iii) Minister to their needs. (Actually Jesus said to 'heal the sick')
iv) Tell them about the Kingdom of God.
I have often found that things work better when we do those four kinds of activity in the actual order in which Jesus lists them - the same order of things to which he coMISSIONed the Twelve. Put together they embrace acts of kindness, geunine relationship-building, serving, and teaching the content of the Gospel-message.
I have worked in parts of the Church which believe that the only valid relationship between a believer and 'children of the world' is step four. However leapfrogging to that fourth activity without investing in the relationship through those other three kinds of activity doesn't often reap good results. Even crusade-converts tend to be people who have received at least activities one and two before ever they walk down that aisle.
So I have enjoyed both teaching and learning for myself the basic skills of befriending people, understanding what Paul means when he says "Let love be genuine." . In that regard I guess I understand sometimes why people talk about "hidden agendas". the desire is for genuine friendship.
I have also worked in parts of the church in which people are happy in the first two to three activities but somehow never get around to the fourth.
Are we embarassed by the Gospel? Or is it that we have lost confidence in its power to win people's faith? Does the language of 'hidden agendas' actually reflect that we are not open and enthusiastic about our belief in Jesus.
My belief and my experience - on the whole - is that it really is possible to be upfront about ones faith and at the same time genuinely befriend and serve people. I don't see a dichotomy here. If those four kinds of activity sat well together for the 12 and 72, why not for us?